‘Session Manager’ idea – is this possible? Alternatives?

[joseph.edwards]

Hello,

My company has been running about 200 NoMachine Enterprise servers/connections in our office during the pandemic. Looks like things are going to remain as they are a while longer so I’m looking into ways of refining the way all our connections are managed between different users.

Currently we are using a shared Google Doc to try and manage the 300-400 ‘hot desk’ users across these connections. People have found a rhythm to the workflow, but we still have issues with different users trying to log onto the same server at the same time and getting mixed up with credentials when opening a new connection.

I want to make a little local web page that a user can use to view available connections, select a connection and allocate themselves a duration and IF possible, follow a link to open said NoMachine connection. See example attached.

Questions:

1. Would a user be able to click a link from a basic webpage that in turn opens NoMachine on their MacBook and loads a predefined config/connection based on their selection?
2. Is there already a better way of managing multiple/alternating users across different connections? I feel like a lot of companies using NoMachine on a larger scale must have encountered this already?

 

Thanks for your time!

Joe

Attachments:

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[Britgirl]

Hi, thanks for your topic, it provides some interesting information and food for thought 🙂

1) Would a user be able to click a link from a basic webpage that in turn opens NoMachine on their MacBook and loads a predefined config/connection based on their selection?

Yes, it is perfectly possible. From your webpage, users would click and download the NXS file which is then loaded to and run from the Player, and the session starts.

2) Is there already a better way of managing multiple/alternating users across different connections? I feel like a lot of companies using NoMachine on a larger scale must have encountered this already?

From what you’ve written in your post, the fact that you have multiple users, which change, and hot desk access (so users hop on to the first computer available), it would seem that Cloud Server comes close to what you need. Cloud Server centralises access to any number of NoMachine servers, in your case Enterprise Desktops. Once you’ve added your desktop nodes to the Cloud Server, anyone connecting to it in order to view the connections and available desktops will be able to see in their Machines panel if anyone is already connected to a specific computer.  It already does this.

The use of profiles/groups would help you to display to your users the computers that they can access.

What the Machines panel doesn’t show in the current version is “who” or “since when” that user has been connected (like in your image). But this is an interesting feature to have and we could certainly consider adding it as information to show of a specific node (the administrator would be able to decide whether to allow such information to be visible).

I’m not sure whether you’ve already taken a look at this product. Consider that in version 8, which is coming soon, we have made significant improvements to the Cloud Server UI which will simplify remote configuration & management of multi-server set-ups considerably.

Edited 29/7: I’ve included a couple of screenshots of the upcoming Cloud Server interface. ‘Browse nodes’ is what the user sees when authenticating on the Cloud Server (that you can see the number of users connected is actually already available in version 7). ‘Add node’ and ‘Edit node’ show the much improved node management aspects 🙂

Attachments:

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[joseph.edwards]

Hi Britgirl,

Thanks so much for taking the time to explain this in depth to me.

Though the cloud server looks really great and would work in our system I’m going to be ambitious and try to create my own web based NoMachine Session Manager.

Please can you steer me towards the correct documentation on how to generate an NXS fie?

 

Many thanks,

 

Joe

[joseph.edwards]

P.s. Have just realise how blatantly easy it is to create an NXS file… Cancel that question! Thanks again!

 

[Britgirl]

OK let us know how you get on 🙂

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